The best way to deploy COM classes from a .NET assembly on the user's computer [closed]

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I've written an assembly that registers and works fine on my development machine using regasm. I'm wondering what's the recommended way to deploy such a library on the users' computers. My users will use the COM library from Excel VBA.

I know I can write a simple script that calls regasm and deliver it to the users, but I'm not sure if it's the best practice. For example, after delivering a couple of updates, my users may end up with several versions of the library registered, so I'd like to offer them a way to uninstall an older version if not needed anymore. The users will write the VBA scripts on their own, so they'll know what version of the COM library they use, so they should be able to tell what versions can be uninstalled.

What's the best practice?

Answer 1

I use WiX to install applications and it has support for creating these registration entries using a tool in it's suite called Heat. It has a bit of a learning curve but I've found it to be an awesome installer suite. It's free and it's widely used.

If your looking for a simpler solution you could just create a batch file like you say to register/unregister the dll(s) manually and to install/uninstall files.